Fifty years ago, in 1975, I traveled with a group of school friends to New York City, Williamsburg, VA and Washington, D.C. on a tour called the Bicentennial Trip to New York. While there, a group of wet-behind-the-ears teenagers got a taste of what life was like in the big city. Prior to that time, most of us had never been east of South Dakota.
We toured the monuments, the Capitol, went ice skating in DC, climbed the Statute of Liberty, saw a couple of Broadway shows – Pacific Overtures and Shenandoah, and generally got into a lot of teenage mischief. Times Square was not the tourist mecca it is now. It was a seedy place full of adult bookstores and disreputable characters on the street, which provided immature 16-year-olds lots of fodder for juvenile humor.
One of my particular favorites on that tour was our visit to the observation deck on the South Tower of the World Trade Center. To a kid from the boondocks of Wyoming, the view was something I never imagined possible. All the hustle and bustle of the city below, while I stood looking from a building that, at that time, had more people in them that lived in my hometown.
Jump to twenty-four years ago, at 8:46 am, when American Airlines flight 11 crashed into the North Tower. At 9:03 am, United Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower. The crashes killed 2,996 people. It is unknown how many others were injured, but the toll remains in the thousands.
343 firefighters and 72 law enforcement officers who were called to the scene died in the collapse. Others died at the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania.
Capt. Jay Jonas was one of 14 people rescued in stairwell B of south tower. When I spoke with him at a firefighting event, he described what is was like before the firefighters went up the stairs into the building to rescue folks from the tower.
He said firefighters were hugging each other and saying their goodbyes. They knew before they went up those stairs that firefighters were going to die that day. Then, they put on their gear and climbed toward the inferno, knowing their death was a possibility.
Sixteen thousand people were rescued from the building before it collapsed.
Now, people are still feeling health effects of the dust, which consist of building materials, shredded glass and smoke byproducts, which were ubiquitous in New York City after the disaster.
It’s been a nearly a generation since those towers collapsed. Much of our population does not know the terror we all felt when we watched those towers pancake. Ask anyone 26 or older where they were when the towers collapsed, they can tell you.
But folks 24 and under were not alive when terrorists killed all those people. To them, it is ancient history.
Fortunately, there is a place where they can go to understand the full impact of that horrible day.
The 9/11 Memorial and Museum is an incredible tribute to those who were murdered on that day, and the victims who suffer to this day.
I thought I understood the memorial. I visited the fountains outside the tower, years ago.
The square fountains surrounded by black stones containing the names of all the people who died that day occupy the spots where the North and South Towers once stood. The water falling into a black hole in the center of that fountain symbolize the “absence made visible” of the void left by those towers and the people who occupied them.
Last week, my son told me there was much more. At his urging, we visited the 9/11 Museum. My son was right. This place is special.
The museum starts with a movie about the story leading up to 9/11, the attacks and the beginning of the aftermath.
Then an escalator takes the visitor deep underground to a display that winds around the foundations of the North and South Towers. The museum contains 40,000 images, 14,000 artifacts, more than 3,500 oral recordings, 500 hours of video, and the long-unidentified remains of 1,115 victims.
Harrowing videos of the towers falling, people jumping, recordings of last phone calls, remnants of fire trucks, and descriptions of the events leading to 9/11, the attacks and the aftermath tell a graphic story.
In a city known for its hustle, bustle and noise, the 9/11 Museum is the quietest place in the New York.
A visit to the museum will leave you feeling anger, disbelief, admiration and a gut-wrenching understanding of that terrible day.
The world changed on 9/11.
The museum is a somber, respectful and sensitive explanation of that day.
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 - 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
